“Had she chosen to marry in Petrograd—better yet, here in Tsarskoe Selo—it might be a different story,” she’d said, but I wondered if that was true. I could tell by the tight line of Mama’s mouth that she didn’t approve of the marriage. “Olga Alexandrovna has not been discreet about her affair with Kulikovsky. They’ve been carrying on quite openly for years.”
After the war, I hoped, Mama would get over her disapproval, and we’d meet Uncle Kolya. Maybe Aunt Olga would be invited to bring her new husband to Alexander Palace, or to Livadia, or on the next cruise of the Standart. I was sure we’d love him, if Aunt Olga did.
• • •
We saw so few people that we were all pleased when Mama’s sister Ella came again from her convent in Moscow to spend several days in Tsarskoe Selo. Mama arranged to take time away from her hospital duties—Olga and Tatiana, too—and ordered Chef Kharitonov to prepare a special luncheon. Mama just picked at her food, as she always did, but I ate my share and would have eaten hers as well if she had not frowned at me so disapprovingly. Lately she had become concerned that I was getting fat—“round as a barrel,” according to Olga and Tatiana, who were both tall and slender. I was short and not slender, though describing me as a barrel was going too far.
The talk during the meal was mostly about the war, the shortages in Moscow, the dark mood of the people, the anti-German insults that were often aimed at Aunt Ella.
Coffee—another scarcity—had just been served, a special treat for Aunt Ella, who for some reason preferred it to tea, when she brought up the subject of Father Grigory, suddenly blurting out, “I beg you, Alix, to consider not just your own devotion to Grigory Efimovich, to you a holy man, a man of God—”
“There is nothing to consider,” Mama interrupted sharply. “He is all that you have said I believe he is. I have no doubt of his miraculous ability to heal. You know what he has done for Baby and for Anya Vyrubova as well.”
Aunt Ella leaned forward and attempted to say something, but Mama held up her hand and continued. “In addition, he offers me excellent advice whenever I ask for it. As you know, while Nicky is at the front, I have tried to help him by taking over some of his responsibilities here at home, replacing ineffectual ministers with those Father Grigory agrees with me are more appropriate. Since Nicky cannot be two places at once, this is a great help to him and to Russia.”
“Of course he cannot be two places at once, but Nicky should be in Petrograd, leading the entire country, not at the front with the army. He’s not a military man, Alix. He’s a tsar. I wonder if he’s forgotten that.”
Mama, who’d greeted Aunt Ella so warmly when she stepped out of the carriage that morning, had turned cold as ice. “You spout absurdities! Nicky knows exactly where his duties lie, and I support him in that. And Father Grigory supports me.” She said this in a tone that we, her daughters, understood meant This conversation is over.
I glanced uneasily at my sisters: Olga and Tatiana sat stiffly, their faces masks of calm, but Marie had tears rolling down her cheeks. She was always the one to show her feelings.
“And that is what is particularly alarming,” Aunt Ella continued, ignoring Mama’s harsh tone. “Rasputin is thoroughly despised by almost everyone. He is not seen as a man of God but as a ruffian who consorts with prostitutes, drinks, and carouses.” Aunt Ella glanced at us, but she didn’t stop. “He is suspected of being a German spy. You and I know that none of this has even a grain of truth in it, but I don’t believe you realize, Alix, how your association with this man is damaging the reputation of the tsar almost beyond repair. Rasputin is taking the Romanov dynasty to ruin, and you are doing nothing to stop it.”
“Enough!” Mama cried, slamming her fists on the table so hard that the silverware rattled—and I jumped. “Not one more word, Ella! Everything you have said about Father Grigory is slander and completely baseless. You and I have no more to say on this subject.”
“I will not be silenced,” said Aunt Ella calmly. “You must hear the truth, and I believe there is no one better suited than I, your own sister, to speak it.”
“It is not the truth, not a word of it, and since you will not respect my wishes to speak no more on this subject, I must ask you to leave.”
Aunt Ella slumped in her chair. “Perhaps it would have been better if I hadn’t come,” she said sadly.
“Yes,” Mama replied. She called a servant, instructed him to summon a carriage to take Aunt Ella to the train, and stalked out of the dining room.
We four sisters stared miserably at our aunt and at Mama’s empty place at the table. No one dared say a word. Marie was sobbing quietly. When Aunt Ella reached out to take her hand, Marie shrank away. Aunt Ella sighed, rose from her chair, and walked slowly around the table, laying a hand on each of our heads and whispering a blessing. Then she left without another word. Marie’s sobbing grew louder, Olga buried her head in her hands, and Tatiana pulled out a cigarette and lit it, a habit she had recently acquired. I waited for somebody to say something, but no one did. Eventually we left the table, and my older sisters went to change into their uniforms and return to the hospital.
“Mashka, are you coming to the lazaret?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Maybe later,” she said miserably. “It’s all too sad.”
It was snowing hard when I left Alexander Palace for Feodorovsky Gorodok. We did not speak again of Aunt Ella’s visit.
• • •
Just before Papa and Alexei were due to arrive home for Christmas, something terrible happened that shattered Mama’s world: Father Grigory disappeared.
Anya came late one evening with a strange story. She had gone to Father Grigory’s apartment in Petrograd to deliver a gift from Mama. He mentioned that he’d been invited to the Yussoupovs’ Moika Palace to meet Princess Irina, and Felix was sending a car for him at midnight. Mama knew that Father Grigory often spent time with Felix, but Anya’s story puzzled her.
“None of this makes sense,” Mama said. “Midnight seems an odd time to visit anyone. And Irina isn’t in Petrograd! Xenia told me that she’s gone to Crimea.”
The next morning while we were having breakfast in her boudoir, Mama left to receive a telephone call. When she returned a little later, her always pale features had turned deadly white. She looked as though she was going to collapse. Tatiana leaped up to help her to her daybed.
“That was the minister of the interior,” she said, gasping. “He called to report that gunshots were heard last night at the Yussoupov palace, and one of Felix’s friends, quite drunk, bragged to a policeman that he’d killed Rasputin.”
Too shocked to know what to say, we gathered close to her.
“Perhaps it’s a mistake,” she said. “I ordered the minister to investigate. And now I must send a telegram to your father and beg him to come home immediately.”
Olga ran to fetch Anya. “He’s dead!” Anya wailed when she heard the news. “Murdered! I’m sure of it!”
We sat with Mama and Anya throughout the day, weeping and praying that a miracle would happen and we would have word from Father Grigory, but none came. Rumors flew. Not only was Felix involved—he was even heard boasting about it, saying that he had done it for the good of Russia—but so, too, was Dmitri Pavlovich. Our cousin Dmitri, who’d spent so much time with us, who’d danced the Boston with me—a murderer? Papa had even thought of him as a possible husband for Olga. Impossible!
The minister of the interior reported to Mama that Dmitri’s father had asked Dmitri to swear on a holy icon and a picture of his dead mother that he had not murdered Rasputin. He had sworn it, but Mama did not believe him—she’d warned Papa that he was on the wrong path. She ordered Dmitri and Felix to be held under house arrest.
Father Grigory’s body was found under the ice of the Neva River. He had been dead for three days. The authorities claimed he had been poisoned and then shot, tied up, and shoved through a hole in the ice. Somehow, they said, he’d survived all that and died by d
rowning.
Papa and Alexei arrived home to a desolate, grieving family where no one wished to eat, and sleep brought the only relief from our sadness. Papa ordered Dmitri to leave Petrograd immediately and to join the Russian troops fighting in Persia, not even allowing him a chance to say good-bye to his father and receive his blessing. Felix and Irina were banished in disgrace to one of the fifty-seven Yussoupov palaces.
On a bright winter morning, dressed in black mourning clothes, we were driven to the unfinished chapel that Anya was having built in an imperial park at some distance from Tsarskoe Selo. A grave had been dug in a corner of the park, an open wound in the sparkling white snow. The starets’s body in a plain wooden coffin arrived in a police motor van. Anya was already there, and Lili Dehn joined the seven of us—not because she loved him, but because she truly loved Mama. Before the coffin was sealed, Mama placed on the dead man’s breast an icon that we had all signed and a letter she’d written to Father Grigory. She’d brought some white flowers and gave some to each of us to scatter on the coffin after it had been lowered into the grave.
And that was the end of Grigory Efimovich Rasputin, our Father Grigory.
CHAPTER 15
After the Murder
TSARSKOE SELO, WINTER 1917
The murder of Father Grigory shook all of us, but Mama most deeply. She no longer had the adviser she depended on while Papa was away at the front, and she did not have the comfort of knowing that Father Grigory could do for Alexei what none of his doctors seemed able to do. Father Grigory had often told her, “If I die or you desert me, you will lose your son and your crown within six months.” She believed that.
Papa didn’t return to Stavka in January but spent long days shut up in his study, poring over his maps, planning the army’s next moves. Our “Ethiopian,” the American Negro Jim Hercules, stood guard at his door, hour after hour. Jim knew us well, but he would not let us in to see Papa, even for a minute. It had never been that way in the past. “Strict orders from His Imperial Majesty,” Jim told us stiffly. Then his face relaxed in a grin. “Papa says no.”
When Papa did leave his study, he looked tired. He had always been thin, but he seemed to have lost even more weight. He smoked constantly. This was not the Papa I knew. Both of my parents were different people. So much had changed since we were all in Mogilev.
During his stay in Tsarskoe Selo, Papa had visits from Uncle Sandro, Irina’s father, who made the long journey from his home in Kiev. Uncle Sandro, Papa, and the five of us had luncheon together, but Mama stayed in her boudoir. We made the greatest effort to be cheerful. Uncle Sandro must have felt terrible that Felix, his son-in-law, had done such an awful, horrible, unforgivable thing to Father Grigory. But that was not even mentioned, at least in the presence of me and my sisters and brother. Instead, leaving his food barely touched, our uncle talked about the Russian railways and how they were not able to transport goods.
“The problem has reached a crisis point,” he said. “It’s necessary to discuss this, Nicky. We’re on the verge of a catastrophe, there is no more coal being shipped, food shortages are growing, we are living from day to day, everything is in complete disarray—”
Papa smiled, a wan, unhappy smile, and held up his hand. “Not now, Sandro,” he said. “This is neither the time nor the place for such a discussion. My son and certainly my daughters have no need to be involved in such unpleasant conversations. You’ve told me that you want to talk to Alix about some of the problems facing our beloved country, and she has agreed to do that. But for now, out of consideration for my children, I suggest that we enjoy our meal and put aside such matters until a later time.”
I glanced at my sisters. Olga was frowning, a thin line deepening between her eyebrows. Tatiana’s face was a perfectly expressionless mask. Marie reached for another sweet. Alexei leaped into the conversation. “Uncle Sandro, you should come to Stavka with Papa and me. We’re going back next week, aren’t we, Papa? And it’s so much fun, being with all the soldiers!”
It was hard to believe, but Uncle Sandro ignored Papa’s wish to stop talking about “unpleasant matters.” He barely acknowledged what Alexei had just said and pressed on. “It’s not just a few extremist revolutionaries and troublemakers who are dissatisfied, Nicky,” he insisted. “You must listen to the ministers, the members of the Duma, the Russian people!”
Papa rose slowly to his feet. “That’s quite enough, Sandro. I believe the empress is ready to receive us.” He forced another humorless smile. “Excuse us, please, my darlings,” he said, and steered our uncle out of the dining room.
Alexei was incensed. “He’s rude!” he grumbled.
“Perhaps he’s also right,” Olga said softly—so softly I may have been the only one to hear.
I was curious to see what she would write in her notebook about Sandro’s visit. It was even worse than I expected.
What a terrible day! Uncle Sandro came and asked to meet with Mother. Father was with them. After a tense luncheon, I stood outside the door to her boudoir and tried to listen. Sandro began to argue, his voice growing louder until he was almost shouting. “You must stop interfering, Alix! I say this as your friend of many years, but you refuse to listen. You are doing great harm to your husband and to Russia. Everyone opposes what you are doing. You must stop at once and allow Nicky to share his powers with the Duma.”
I couldn’t make out Mother’s reply, but I could guess what she was saying, because I have heard her say it many times: “The tsar is the autocrat, the absolute ruler by divine right. All power is vested in him, as it should be, and he answers only to God! Certainly not to the Duma!”
Tanya happened to come along and demanded to know why I was eavesdropping. I hushed her and signaled her to listen. Sandro was roaring, “I have been silent for thirty months, while you and Rasputin took over the government. You and Nicky may be willing to die, to let the monarchy die, but what about your family? You are dragging all of us down with you.”
Neither Tanya nor I waited to hear any more. Uncle Sandro’s visit was a lot like Aunt Ella’s visit—very upsetting but accomplishing nothing.
I replaced the notebook and sat shaking on my bed. My dog, Jimmy, jumped up beside me and licked my hand. I stroked his silky ears and tried to think. What was happening to us, to our family? To Russia?
And what was going to happen next?
CHAPTER 16
Abdication
TSARSKOE SELO, MARCH 1917
Maybe Uncle Sandro was right. Certain basic foods had become scarce. Butter Week almost didn’t happen, not the way it once did. Kharitonov managed to get enough butter and cheese for our blini, but when Count Benckendorff brought Mama the day’s menus, he told her that it was a good thing the Great Fast was beginning.
“The chefs will do their best, Your Majesty, but for the next seven weeks we shall all be eating very simply, even sparingly.”
Since our parents ate simply and sparingly anyway, this news didn’t seem to bother them as much as it did me.
“By Easter things will certainly be better,” Papa said, trying to cheer me up. “We’ll celebrate Pascha with a grand feast.”
Harder to endure than our dreary diet was Papa’s decision late in February to go back to Mogilev—without Alexei. It was a bitterly cold day when we watched him drive off. The guards saluted smartly, frost glistening on their mustaches, and church bells rang out as they always did to mark the tsar’s departure. I thought their clamor sounded mournful, and Alexei was weeping with disappointment.
Within hours after Papa had gone, Olga and Alexei began complaining of headaches. When Dr. Botkin came for his daily visit, he took their temperatures, peered into their throats, and announced his diagnosis: measles. Mama remembered that a week earlier some boys from the military school had come to play with Alexei. One of the cadets was coughing and looked flushed.
“I should have sent him away,” Mama said. “The boy was coming down with measles but we didn’t know it. Alexe
i caught it, and now Olga, too, is ill. It’s only a matter of time until the rest have it.”
Tatiana and Anya were the next victims. Marie and I did what we could to help, bringing tea for Mama to give to the patients, fetching hot water bottles one minute and ice bags the next. We weren’t allowed in the sickrooms, which were kept dark because light hurt the eyes of the sick ones.
Mama called Lili Dehn and asked her to take the train from Petrograd to spend the day. Whenever Lili came for a visit, she usually brought delightful pastries for our afternoon tea from a shop near her mansion, but this time there were no pastries—only disturbing news.
“People broke into the bakeries, shouting that there was no bread and grabbing whatever they could get their hands on,” she told us. “The Cossacks drove them off, but only after they’d done a lot of damage. The Cossacks weren’t using their whips—the Duma had ordered them not to interfere. Now the strikes are spreading, and nobody is doing anything to stop them.”
Mama shrugged it off. “They’re just a lot of hooligans trying to make trouble, Lili.”
Lili waited until the servants had poured tea from the samovar and left the boudoir. “Better not to talk about it in front of the servants. You don’t know what they may have heard or what they’re thinking.”
“Good heavens, Lili!” Mama said. “Our servants are completely loyal and trustworthy! They would never cause problems.”
“I’m just suggesting that it’s better to be cautious. You’re awfully isolated here,” she said. “I don’t think you understand how bad it is in the city. It’s been so cold and the snow is so deep that the trains haven’t been able to bring coal and flour into Petrograd. Some say it’s the troublemakers and not just the snow that halted the trains. People are hungry, and they’re angry. They’ve taken to the streets and brought Petrograd to a standstill. I had trouble just getting to the train station.”
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